there was a moment when they arrived, that i was nervous to try them on. what if they didn't fit? what if they didn't like me? what if we had nothing in common?

but they fit like foot gloves and we got to know each other quickly and our fast friendship didn't seem forced or unnatural or like our parents wanted us to get along because we lived close together so they wouldn't have to drive anyone anywhere.

do you know this song? do you know any other paddling songs? me neither. i also only know that line of this song so sang it on repeat the whole canoe trip down the river. and i freaked out every time the water splashed onto my wedding trial hair-do. and sometimes i'd stop paddling all together.

the beauty and humour in being with someone who you love and loves you so completely back, is that even if you are being a turd in a canoe, they'll accept you in all your glorious turdness.

and offer you some pie, warmed in the oven, when you get back on land.

magic boat dock with magic round of light in top right corner.

this is how you paddle right? haha i used to actually be good at this. my mom and i camped and portaged together in killarney when i was younger so it's in there somewhere. under levels of spaz and curled hair.

beautiful.

i love the fall because the sun has stopped spilling everywhere and instead chooses carefully where it will kiss. like the treetops on the edge of this river. it's a brush painted in gold but the paint is non-toxic and doesn't smell offensive.

i'm all 'what a neat picture this is going to be' and jeremy's all 'i'd like to throw you overboard'

safe on land. we had cheese and olives and wine and pie and reminisced about our jaunt down the river. funny how moods are in hindsight! right sweetie? that's funny now right?

jeremy's love and cheese and olives are a reward undeserved. i'm a lucky, lucky gal.

jared was in town last weekend but we missed him because we were out of town, having the worlds loveliest time in the worlds loveliest log cabin.

it was 180 years old a place and the guy who ran it said they're not even sure who built it because it was there before the land in the area was settled. that is so neat.

it had floorboards you could see through, from the top floor to the bottom, and i liked to call to jeremy through the cracks and have him guess where exactly i was. the place had a soul. an old soul wrapped up in quilts.
we had errands to run in the mornings, caterer meetings and florist meetings and we had to test out the corn maze at the wedding venue, but the afternoon and evenings were ours in this place that felt like home. and i could taste what life would be like for us, when we actually do get there. tasted like camping pizzas.

did you know about this place? kowloon walled city? it was a fort in the middle of the island of hong kong that the chinese could live in and be undisturbed by the british when they invaded only britain didn't keep that agreement and attacked the fort anyways.

empty and condemned, it later became a sardine packed community of poor folks, criminals and probably the goblin king. before it was torn down in 1993, 50 thousand people lived in area that was less than 20 kilometres square. i hope they liked their neighbours!

AND because there were so many buildings seemingly one on top of each other, inhabitants rarely saw light, giving it it's nick name - 'the city of darkness'

jeremy finds the neatest stuff on the internet and then comes home and tells me about it and we learn more on the subject together like in school. which means i'm marrying my teacher.

jennifer cairns came over and we had a picnic to celebrate saturday and haircuts and drinking red wine at noon. i made salad with peaches and red leaf lettuce and a homemade honey mustard vinaigrette. jenn brought cupcakes in adorable individual boxes and fuchsia gerber daisies that are staring at me right now yelling weeeeeeee cause that is the only thing gerber daisies know how to say.

jenn is lovely and our picnic was lovely and i liked when jeremy zoomed around the corner on his bike and took our photo. i also like when i told him to 'be careful' riding and watched him peel away with no hands on the handlebars MA HA HA boys.

no boys allowed at this picnic though this was a girlie picnic through and through.

with a month to go till the wedding and the bills piling up i thought, what better time to go to the salon and get an expensive cut and highlights!

sometimes though, the money you spend at the hair place is the best money you could spend. it just makes you feel like one million dollars so paying a premium for that seems a tax worth paying.

i've been going to the same hairdresser for over three years now which is a long time i feel and we've become quite close. we talk about all the important things like her latest boyfriend and how mischa barton's drug problem is causing bloat and she always cuts me the most perfect bangs which is a skill for which she should be richly rewarded.

also they make you cappuccino's there for free.

my new hair pretty much looks a lot like my old hair but shinier and healthier and it's bouncing around like it's so excited. i got red highlights which are the exact colour of my normal hair only fake which might force the question why get highlights at all and to that i say for the barista beverages.

jeremy's dad has an old porsche and last weekend they stuffed me in the back of it and took me to a horse show.

how posh!

i kept thinking of bridget jones when hugh grant takes her in his convertible and she gets out with the craziest hair.

horse jumping is funny. not funny 'ha ha' but just funny like 'hmm that's interesting i'm not sure i get what's going on here'. i mean i get that they're jumping but i don't really get the point? if i was a horse jumper i'd just run my horse around the ring and pretend i was an elven sprite on the back of a magical steed which the audience would appreciate i'm sure, this sport seems rather repetitious.

nothin' say elite like a red plastic wristband! this got us free booze and food but we had sandwiches before we left and it was too hot to pound them back so really it got us the envy of everyone without a wrist band. great also.

at the end of our fancy day we drank beer inside jer's dad's fancy gazebo. jer and i think we could quite happily live in this gazebo. we'd just have to invent some sort of trolley pulley system to get food and drinks from the house.

we took this walk on this trail and didn't know where it would end up and it ended up here and so here we sat. we saw a muskrat and i thought about steph and how she would hate it. then i thought maybe if i brushed it's hair and gave it a different tail she'd hate it less.

often when i'm experiencing moments of true happiness, nature and jeremy are involved.

we decided to do some home renovations last weekend and it was some fun. i use the term 'renovations' loosely as we didn't really do any caulking or deck work more just like moved things around and bought some stuff and got inspired by our space.

not a renovation, a quilt! we realized this weekend that we like something called'flea market style'when jer was flipping through this book in anthropologie. (in other news all my decisions are now guided by this beautiful store which costs ten thousand times what you'd spend at a flea market unless it is a flea market where gold is sold.)

basically the style is that you decorate using stuff you find or get for free or for five bucks from a yard sale. this quilt was 50 dollars so it's not following those rules but it's still antique and cute and i want to curl up in the centre of it like a cat and have a nap.

not a renovation either but a wedding teaser!!!

cool old keys from the antique market that are part of a neat new project jeremy is working on. he's so creative! i love that we have projects. and i love that i can take partial credit cause we're a 'we'. that's how that works right?

the picture wall! these pictures have been on the floor in this formation for months and months and this weekend marked the end of their long and patient wait. way to go pictures!

the photo on the right with the bike i got in montreal from some photographer on a street corner. lily got one too only hers doesn't have the bike and we pretend the bike is gone from her picture because it is over visiting me. speaking of which lily if this bike is going to live here full time, you really should be sending some support.

the frog one someone's mom made but we got it for a buck at a yard sale, the mug one is a photo jeremy took on his balcony in japan and the little one on the bottom is of cave men hunting grocery carts.

there are more renovations like we put up little wall mounted bookshelves in the bedroom and picked books we love from the big bookshelf and moved them over. also we took down the air conditioner. also fall is a great time to nest.

i just got my wedding dress back from the bustle installation place and i put it in the wedding closet which harbours many exciting items including my two new dresses.i wonder what sort of conversation the dresses are having right now. i hope they're all like 'oh you're so beautiful' 'no no you're so beautiful' 'no you're the most beautiful' and then my wedding dress will finally be like 'yes you're right thank you'.

and he bought me two dresses, one for dinner the night before our wedding and one for wearing the day after our wedding when we're leaving to go on our honeymoon like how ladies in the olden days wore suits and hats!

i love them so much i tried on many and all of them were beautiful but these were the prettiest and most special.

i do spend most of my days in an office in a somewhat normal fashion but there's a few days here and there that call for us to be outdoors and/or down on the brick works site and those are my very favourite days. these pictures are from a thank-you party we threw for the advertising agency that's been promoting (for free) our company for over 10 years and it was SOME fun thank-you party! there was relay races and organic sausages and what more could you ever ask for on a tuesday?

you can tell i've been working with these people for awhile now they're totally tuning me out in this picture to have their set-up discussions. but look at my new hat guys!!!here i am making a sign that says WASHROOMS with an arrow on it. i gave up halfway and asked someone else to do it cause they'd 'be better at it than me'. i felt limited creatively.

me and mel got hired the same day and our departments recently merged or got married or something so we're like the children of the marriage and we bring the departments together!

i hope the departments don't get divorced that would be awkward for us and difficult to decide who goes with who on what weekends.

our boss looked at the pictures of this day and said 'you guys look like the very best of friends' HAHAHAHAHAH maybe that's only funny if you know him. no yes that's funny for everyone.

we were promised these if we volunteered to be part of the set-up crew and i kept thinking of them the whole time like oooo i wonder when those are coming and eventually i was like hey what about those ice cream sandwiches we were promised?